A few isolated birthday-theme ads were cropping up on local television stations last week, and a few dealers were still advertising the four-for-$100 promotion in newspapers.

There is no industry association for consignment dealers, and most dealers do not advertise consignment sales.

Licensed dealers certainly advertise more widely, and seem more responsive to the small client than most stockbrokers.

Indeed, in this year's catalogue for the New York show three dealers actually advertised the same objects they had advertised in the Grosvenor House catalogue only four months ago.

A dealer in Maryland advertised the disk at $250 in a Beatles fan magazine.

Shortly after his daughter was born, he began subscribing to A B Bookman's Weekly, the trade journal, in which dealers advertise books they are seeking or selling.

Why buy a Cadillac when dealers advertise that anyone can now own a Cadillac?

That realization has, in turn, pushed both dealers and car makers to advertise heavily on independent car-selling Web sites, thereby lifting the prospects of a number of Internet companies.

The wholesalers passed them on, and the dealers displayed and advertised them.

The dealer subsequently repaired it and advertised it for sale at £136.